NYAXE GALLERY: Autumn Opening

The opening of the the Autumn Exhibition for the NYAXE Gallery in Palo Alto kicked off on Thursday evening to a large cadre of art appreciators and technology movers-and-shakers in Silicon Valley.



In attendence were some of Silicon Valley's rising stars including Michael Arrington, Editor of TechCrunch; Craig Hughes, CTO at NewCo, Inc and former Co-Founder of GumStix; Normal Liang, former executive of Photobucket; Luke Winter, CEO Galaxy Granola; Geoffrey Arone, CEO of DanceJam and Flock; Terry Angelos, Co-Founder & CPO, TrialPay; Tom Conrad, CTO of Pandora; Irene McGee, CEO of No One is Listening; and Paul Guely, Founder & CEO of Arma Partners.



Kimia Ferdowski, one of the winning artists was in attendance with one of her subjects.



Twenty MyArtSpace artists were represented at the show including Penelope Caldwel, Takefumi Hori, Kimia Ferdowsi, Cara Thayer & Louie Van Patten, Beverley McQuillan, Barbara Diener, Rebecca Fontaine-Wolf, Eline Peek, Mikhail Gubin, Emily Maddigan, Chris Dunker, Jeanne Wilkinson & Andrew Yonda, Bill Bosler, Christopher Savage, Dan Atkins, Yuval Shalgi,
Pearl Van Geest, Renata Fernandez and Chanil Hong.




Catherine McCormack-Skiba, CEO and Founder of MyArtSpace with Paul Noel Guely, Founder of Arma Partners.



Craig Hughes, CTO of NewCo, Inc and former CTO of Gumxtix and Loca.com



Nigel Evans, myartspace's resident curator, preparing the show having flown in from London.




The Autumn Exhibition will run at the NYAXE Gallery until the end of December. The Winter Exhibition is then planned to open on December 10th.

New 1st and 3rd Place Winners for NYAXE Competition

We, at myartspace, are dedicated to increasing the accessibility of art. We are striving to liberate and empower artists so that they may create artwork that challenges us to look at our world in new ways.

In order to fulfill this vision, we support the laws and conventions for protecting the intellectual property of artists. It was recently called to our attention that we had selected two pieces of art for our latest NYAXE Competition that did not credit nor have due permission from the original creators.

Our thoughts on the debate over what constitutes Fair Use was just covered in our last blog post (October 17, Shepard Fairey), and we will not revisit it for now.

However, we did feel compelled to announce 2 new, outstanding 1^st and 3^rd place winners for our NYAXE Competition. They are:

Penelope Caldwell, 1^st Place

Kimia Ferdowsi, 3^rd Place

We thank all of the contest participants, as we are thrilled by the quality, audacity, and authenticity of the thousands of submissions we had received. You are gifted creators who deserve recognition and respect for your art.

Penelope Caldwell


Kimia Ferdowsi

Shepard Fairey Update -- The "HOPE" Picture

myartspace.com has been at the forefront of the Shepard Fairey issue around use of an image of President Obama that became the "Hope" poster. Our contention, by Brian Sherwin, has been all along that this work by Shepard Fairey was from an original photograph and then subsequently revised and commercialized by Fairey. Don't get us wrong, we are big advocates of commercialization. But we believe credit (and monetary reward) is due to the original artists that do the work.

From Yahoo News: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091018/ap_on_en_ot/us_ap_poster_artist

On Friday night, Fairey's attorneys — led by Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project at Stanford University — said they intend to withdraw from the case and said the artist had misled them by fabricating information and destroying other material.

Fairey admitted that he didn't use The Associated Press' photo of Obama seated next to actor George Clooney he originally said his work was based on — which he claimed would have been covered under "fair use," the legal claim that copyrighted work can be used without having to pay for it.

Instead he used a picture the news organization has claimed was his source — a solo picture of the future president seemingly closer to the iconic red, white and blue image of Obama, underlined with the caption "HOPE." Fairey said that he tried to cover up his error by submitting false images and deleting others.

The distinction is critical because fair use can sometimes be determined by how much of an original image or work was altered in the creation of a new work. If Fairey didn't need to significantly alter the image he used — in this case the solo shot of Obama — then his claim could have been undermined. Fair use cases also may consider the market value of the copyrighted material and the intended use of the newly created work.

See more about this subject by visiting the Yahoo News Article listed above OR the many articles on myartspace BLOG. Click HERE to view those articles.

Flash Website

This artist's website is one example of how an artist's website (in this case, a photographer) can be very unique and perhaps very influential in the attention the work can receive:
http://www.matthewmahon.com/

Art Process - More Powerful than Product?

This artist, Aaron Jasinski, inspires us to think about how we can present not only our art online - but also the process of creating art, as an art in of itself!
In other words, he documented his creative process, and that has been in some ways more powerful than the finished piece.

Check it out:

Vote For Art, a new startup site with big ambitions and a competition

At myartspace. we love the raw energy and passion that goes into creative work. In many cases, it's our artists pushing the edge with their latest work.

Creative work on the web is also interesting for us, and just watching the launch of new and interesting web sites with ideas and ambitions is really quite exciting.

Jeremy Parker, an enterprising college youth, has spotted an opportunity to have real art on t-shirts in University bookstores, and founded VoteForArt.com. VoteForArt.Com is the very first crowdsourced college tshirt website, where artists from around the world can submit tshirt designs for universities and other licensed institutions. The community will vote on the designs, and the top 3 winners will have their designs sold online AND at their local university bookstore. The designer of the winning design also gets $500 in their pocket!

If you've got some creative ideas on some logo designs and want to try your creative skills out, you can enter for FREE!

Just visit www.voteforart.com

Re-ordering the Sequence of Images using the Gallery Wizard

Human nature is that if a person sees something they like, they look further.

When you construct your online galleries to present your work, you should consider that fact. Your very best work should be presented first in a gallery, as this will likely cause the viewer to look deeper into your work. If they lose interest by the first few images, then they may very well move on, without seeing your best image.

At times, with visual presentation, order matters as well. So the sequence in which your work is viewed is important.

Premium Service members have "drag-and-drop" capability to re-order images within a portfolio/gallery. Standard users, however, can re-order images with the use of the Gallery Wizard. The steps are pretty stright forward.

(1) Log into myartspace and go to the "My Account" page

(2) Click on "Gallery Wizard" which you will find towards the center of the page

(3) Enter a name for a new gallery, perhaps "Miami 2009"

(4) On the next screen, you will have a prompt to upload your first image. If you click on "Browse Library..." you will see all the images you have uploaded. Select the first image you want the jury to see. Remember, the Gallery Wizard builds a gallery in the order it is given images, from left-to-right.

(5) Click on "Upload Next" image and repeat the process until you are done, then you can click on "Finish" and either add music or not.

That's it! Your new gallery will be in the order you wanted. If you choose, you can delete the old gallery so as not to confuse the viewers.

MYARTSPACE launches MIAMI 2009; Juried Competition with winners work shown at Aqua Art Miami

MyArtspace.com, the premier site for contemporary art, is offering a new juried competition. The top 3 winners will have their work represented at Aqua Art Miami Art Fire, which takes place the week of the world-renown Art Basel Miami Beach, December 3-6, 2009 . A total of 50 MyArtspace artists have their work digitally on display as well. The deadline for submission is Sunday November 15, 2009.

Palo Alto, CA (PRWEB) October 6, 2009 -- MyArtspace.com, the premier online venue for contemporary art has launched an exciting new juried competition for its community – Miami 2009. The top 3 winners will have their work flown to Miami and represented at the Aqua Art Miami Art Fair during the week of Art Basel Miami, December 3-6, 2009. Additionally, the top 50 finalists will have their work digitally shown at the exhibit. The deadline for contest registration and submission of work is Sunday November 15, 2009.

To enter the competition, artists must be a new or existing member of MyArtspace. Membership is free, and members can upload an unlimited amount of fine art, music, video and audio narration and create a highly contemporary art viewing experience. Registration for the Miami 2009 competition is $25, but free for members with a premium MyArtspace subscription. The winners will be announced on Friday November 27, 2009. The Aqua Art Miami Art Fair will be held December 3-6, 2009.

The Miami 2009 competition will be juried by a prestigious panel of art critics and curators. This jury panel will be announced separately on October 15th, 2009.

Catherine McCormack-Skiba, the CEO and founder of MyArtspace noted, “the influence of the art fairs on the industry is significant and Miami stands tall amongst all venues globally. With our incredible community of talented contemporary artists, we feel it’s imperative that they be well represented there. We’ve chosen to work with Aqua Art Miami this year, which we think is an excellent venue for our artists. Myspace.com is without parallel in trying to bring recognition and opportunities for contemporary artists from its well-developed social network of more than 60,000 artists in 116 countries.”

"We're proud to have the myartspace Miami 2009 competition winners in our show this year," said Jaq Chartier, Co-Founder of Aqua Art Miami. "The people who come for Art Basel week are on a serious hunt, eager to discover fresh work and artists they've never seen before. You couldn't ask for a better audience for the artists you care about, and Myartspace clearly gets that. We're really looking forward to working together this year."


Artists interested in learning more about the juried competition can do so by visiting http://www.MyArtspace.com/miamibasel.

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Aqua Art Miami is a prestigious contemporary art fair that takes place in Miami concurrently with Art Basel Miami Beach, and is a part of the community of exhibitors that define Art Basel Miami Beach . Aqua started in 2005 as an experimental project at the Aqua Hotel in South Beach near Art Basel, and eventually expanded to include a larger booth-style fair called Aqua Wynwood. This year the fair will focus on the Aqua Wynwood location, consolidating the best of both fairs into one exceptional event. Aqua Wynwood opens with a VIP Preview Brunch on Thursday morning, December 3, and the exhibition continues through Sunday, December 6.

Based in Seattle, Aqua's organizers have made it their mission to promote innovative programming from the West Coast as well as the greater USA and abroad, with a particular interest in young dealers and galleries with strong emerging artist programs. A number of new dealers have made their debut at Aqua, as well as other exhibitors and artists who have never shown at an art fair before. For more information on Aqua Art Fair, please see their website at: http://www.aquaartmiami.com.

The Struggler's Theme

This video caught my eye on the University of the Arts London blog. It is called "The Struggler's Theme" by Himanshu Desai.

The Struggler's Theme from Himanshu Desai on Vimeo.